The Best Way To Get Ultra Crispy Hot Dogs On The Grill

Of the biggest mistakes everyone makes when grilling hot dogs, leaving your wieners intact is perhaps the most obscure. Truthfully, very few grillmasters think to cut into a frank before grilling it. And, yet, slicing your hot dog down the middle and butterflying it before grilling could just be the secret to the crispiest, most amazingly charred 'dogs on the block ... wisdom we're imparting right before that greatest of all hot dog holidays, July 4th.

Do you remember learning about surface area in middle school math class? Neither do we, but this rudimentary mathematical concept explains why a butterfly cut makes such sense when grilling hot dogs. By cutting the hot dogs open and unfolding them like a book, you increase the square inches of meat that can be exposed to your grill's heat at a single time. This creates more space to accumulate delicious texture and grill marks that are key to the best grilled hot dogs. Spiralizing hot dogs has a similar effect, but is a much bigger pain to achieve. On the other hand, butterflying is a technique that even the greenest barbeque babes can master. Even better, these weenies come with a cool added bonus that will have you obsessed.

Basically, the only tricky part of butterflying a hot dog is cutting in a straight line. Resist the urge to slice into it with the frank in hand (can you say ouch?), and set the frank down on a cutting board, making a controlled, quick cut with a very sharp paring knife. You don't want to score down too deep, because cutting the hot dog in half is not the goal here. Once you open the meat up, you want to grill it on very high heat, cut side down, for a couple of minutes. Then flip that puppy over and let the grates work their magic on the casing.

A delicious bonus of butterflying any sausage is that the split in the link makes a natural trough for toppings. This definitely comes in handy when you are filling a mega-stuffed specimen like the First State's unique hot dog, the Delaware Destroyer. Even commonplace ketchup and relish will snuggle perfectly into the canyon created by butterflying, preventing your condiments from getting all over your hands. In short, there are few real downsides to butterflying hot dogs, minus a scooch more prep work and the non-zero risk that you might eat more than you planned on. We may not want to actually know what hot dogs are made of, but we do know that nothing beats a grill-blackened frank on America's birthday.